At our September 2022 staff meeting, we looked at our student evidence from last year.  We wanted to look at what worked with our teaching, what the students learned and what our next steps would be for this school year.  This evidence is one piece of the information we use to determine a focus for the year.

Staff looked at the following data:

At the end of last year:

• K-2 66% of students could name one or more strategies.  For example, "I ask for help" or "I take a breath." 
• Grade 3-5 88% of students could name one or more strategies.  75% of students could name two or more strategies, such as:

1. “I ask for help.”
2. “I can take a break and then come back and try again.”
3. “I ask a friend.”
4. “Telling myself I can do it and keep going.”

We concluded that more students are now able to express/articulate strategies that they rely on when they are doing something that is challenging for them.  
 
In small groups, Maple Lane staff explored the following questions:

•    What are one or two other strategies we would like students to add to their toolbox in terms of perseverance and working through challenging tasks? 

•    How might we connect our work with perseverance with our focus on reading strategies and instruction? 

•    Where should we focus our efforts this year?

From our discussions, we chose two areas to focus on for this school year.  We want to have common vocabulary and language to teach students in building their bank of strategies to draw on when faced with a challenging task.  This includes positive self-talk sentence starters. The second area of focus is to have personal goals in different subject areas and social emotional learning. We are excited to see perseverance and problem solving strategies across the curriculum.